Wednesday

The Fort Worth Court of Appeals has issued a second opinion concerning misconduct by a Tarrant County Assistant District Attorney.

For the second time, the Fort Worth Appeals Court found the prosecutor's trial tactics to be intentional and/or reckless prosecutorial misconduct. In particular, the court cited the prosecutor's tactic of repeatedly commenting on the Defendant's invocation of her right to remain silent.

But here's something that pisses me off:

Dallas lawyer says it's a "Tarrant County ADA," mentions the defendant's name (she's now been cleared) and notes the judge.

What's missing? The NAME of the scummy prosecutor who defiled the law and wrongly convicted someone by resorting to tactics that constituted prosecutorial misconduct.

Here at INDEFENSIBLE we name names! And so with a little digging, I can now report that the "Tarrant County ADA" is named:

MICK MEYER

Interesting that nowhere in the appellate opinion is Meyer named--instead the opinion goes out of it's way to only refer to "the state."

2 comments:

Where did you do your "digging?" I don't think that was the name of the prosecutor.

There were three names listed on the opinion, other than the District Attorney who represented the State. They are:

Charles M. MallinCurtis Jenkins& Jim Hudson.

Since it is impossible to discern from this opinion which one of these lawyers actually tried the case and which one simply filed appellee's brief, I believe it is irresponsible to say which one of them was guilty of prosecutorial misconduct. ML

Hi,Not sure the scare quotes are necessary...I did a little Lexis/Nexis work, and here's what I found:

Back on January 9th, 2004 The Dallas Ft.Worth Star Telegram reported that:

Wilson declared a mistrial during Twine's July 2002 trial after a defense attorney argued that prosecutor Mick Meyer, a former Tarrant County assistant district attorney who now works in private practice as a defense lawyer, asked Twine an inappropriate question.

Defense attorney Wes Ball could not be reached for comment Friday, but has said that Meyer suspected the jury wouldn't convict Twine so he recklessly asked the question to get the case thrown out so it could be retried.

"That is absolutely not true," Meyer said Friday. "We had scientific evidence waiting in the wings as soon he was done testifying. My heart pours out for the victim in this case."

At a hearing after the trial, Ball asked that Twine's case be dismissed on the grounds that he cannot be tried twice for the same crime under the double jeopardy provisions of the Constitution.

In that hearing, Ball argued that Meyer had previously prompted a mistrial in Wilson's court by asking a similar question to another defendant, Swanda Marie Lewis, during her murder trial. Wilson denied the defense's double jeopardy motion in Twine's case and granted the prosecution's motion to exclude evidence about Meyer's actions in the Lewis trial.

Ball then appealed to the Second Court of Appeals, who ordered that Wilson conduct a hearing to consider the excluded evidence from the Lewis trial.

According to the order, Wilson, after considering evidence from both trials, ruled this week that Twine could not be prosecuted again. The judge found that improper prosecutorial misconduct provoked the mistrial, that an instruction to the jury to disregard the prosecutor's question could not alleviate the problem and that the prosecutor had a conscious disregard that his conduct could lead to a mistrial.

Twine is accused of inviting the woman to his house, getting drunk, tearing her clothes away each time she tried to leave and forcing her to have sex. The woman said she finally got away by saying she had a sick child.

According to defense attorney Ball, Meyer's first question to Twine under cross-examination suggested that Twine had previously refused to talk to the prosecution. Ball said the question was a violation of Twine's Fifth Amendment right to remain silent after his arrest.

After sending the jury out of the courtroom and after a brief recess, Wilson declared a mistrial.

In November 2001, Wilson declared a mistrial in the middle of Lewis' murder case after defense attorney Danny Burns argued that Meyer alluded to the fact that Lewis had refused to talk to a homicide detective after her arrest.